Chapter 22: Gladiatorial Combat

The buzzer sounded to begin the battle. Tariel wanted to charge at the enemy, but Artalax told him to hold back. "They're more powerful than us. We have to stay back and use ranged weapons if we want to win." Artalax casted a spell to impede the enemy's advance, while Talia aimed his bow and shot at Helkat. Although the arrow looked like it was going to hit, at the last split second Helkat magically disappeared and reappeared a couple meters to the side.

"That is the right way to use a bow, isn't it?" Talia asked. "I mean, I really haven't used one of these before…"

"Yes, you got it," said Artalax. "Now focus on the battle or we're going to lose."

A2: We've got a special surprise this round, Jim. A new environmental hazard right in the middle of the arena. This is sure going to make our gladiators change their tactics!

A trap door in the middle opened up and a pole came up. On top of the pole was mounted a magically enchanted machine-gun-looking thing that was shooting out a hail of firey bullets sideways. The gun automatically turned toward the Avengers' side of the arena. Artalax ran up toward the machine gun, grabbed it, and forcibly turned it around, aiming it at Valerian.

A1: Now that's a tactic you don't see every day. It's a good thing Valerian's got that shield. They don't call it "top-of-the-line" for nothing!

Valerian kneeled down and but his shield up in front of him, completely blocking his whole body. The bullets hit the shield, but even several seconds of sustained fire didn't so much as make a dent. Artalax turned the machine gun toward Helkat. Helkat ran away to escape from the approaching bullets, but it was clear he was about to get trapped into a corner with nowhere to wan. He activated his PTD-1000, and teleported adjacent to Artalax. He stabbed Artalax in the back, causing him to fall. But while he was falling, he grabbed onto the machine gun and turned it toward him, thus hitting, and incapacitating, Helkat.

A2: This is clearly an exciting battle. One down on both sides, but that gun in the middle doesn't look like it's working anymore…

When Artalax had grabbed the gun as he was falling, he had inadvertently pulled it off its pole, so it was now sitting on the ground, useless. Valerian saw this and made his attack. He rushed toward Talia , drew his sword, and stabbed Talia straight through the middle. But just after Valerian stabbed Talia, Tariel turned around and stabbed Valerian in his now vulnerable back.

A1: This is the closest battle there's been in a long time. Two down on both sides – it's one on one now. Will our challengers take home the 250,000 gold pieces? It all depends on what they do next…

Tariel and Joseph faced each other. While Joseph didn't seem to have any weapons, Tariel knew he could never be sure. He didn't want to close to melee range, but he himself had only a sword, and no other weapons. So Tariel made a brave but desperate move – he drew his sword and threw it at Joseph like a dagger. The sword lodged itself straight in Joseph's midsection. Direct hit! Joseph staggered back, and looked like he was about to fall.

A2: Well, I'd never thought I'd have to say this, but it looks like … he's dead, Jim!

A1: I'm not so sure about that, William…

Joseph took out one of his bottles of Heal-O-Aid and chugged it. Now almost fully healed, he took the sword out of his body and charged at Tariel, who was now defenseless. Joseph hit Tariel, who fell down, defeated.

A2: I guess you were right. It was a close match, but it looks like the Carpathia Champions have just earned their 117th straight victory! Will the next group of challengers fare any better? Probably not, but you can find out after these brief messages…

Tariel, Artalax, and Talia, woke up in the arena's healing room. They were lying on beds, barely able to move. A priest approached them.

"Where are we? What's going on?" Tariel asked.

"Open Challenge Day just ended," the priest said. "Nobody was able to beat them. The Champions kept their title."

Oh, crud, Artalax thought. That means it's after midnight. We missed that show that was at 11.

"Drink these,' the priest told Tariel, Artalax, and Talia, giving each of them a 20-ounce bottle of Heal-O-Aid. When they drank the healing potions, they immediately felt a lot better and were able to hop out of their beds and walk out the door.

"You have to admit, this mission is a quagmire," Talia said.

"What do you mean?" asked Tariel.

"You dragged me into this mission without any kind of a plan. Okay, so we beat those monsters that the Gatekeeper made us fight. But aside from that we keep losing. And you have no exit strategy."

"Well, you were the one who insisted on coming with me on this mission," replied Tariel. "And now you say you don't want to be here. You're a flip-flopper, Talia."

"I did vote for coming here, before I voted against it," said Talia. "Or something like that. Maybe it was the other way around. But my point is that you went in here completely blindly. You had no justification."

"Yes, we did," said Tariel. "Kalmeth is here and he's concocting his evil plan. And we don't know the full extent of his power.He might destroy the world! We have to make a preemptive strike before the evil plan comes to fruition."

"Look, you had no credible evidence that there ever was an evil plan of mass destruction. And you still have no credible evidence, even after we've slaughtered hundreds of innocent monsters. You just made all that up."

"No, I didn't", said Tariel. "Look, back in chapter 19 we figured out what the evil plan is. Our kingdom is going to be completely destroyed by Kalmeth's forces unless we find him first. Now that we're in, we can't leave until we accomplish the mission."

"Even still," said Talia, "we still need a better plan. We've already had four casualties already, if you count the time the monster almost killed you back in Chapter 18 and the three of us that got knocked out in this battle. We definitely need better equipment, not like the hillbilly armor we've been using so far."

"See, you're flip-flopping again," said Tariel. "You were the one who voted against the 87-gold-piece appropriations bill to get the plus-3 battle armor with 10 percent base damage reduction."

"Well, um, I'm not sure … that was iffy," Talia said. "But still, you have to admit you have no plan. So far we've just been bouncing over the adventure map trying to do side quests. You don't even know where we're supposed to go next. And even if you did, you have to admit we didn't bring in enough troops to beat the main bosses."

"Okay, so we had bad intelligence," Tariel admitted. "But at this point, what would you do next? How would you handle this situation differently?"

"We have to form a coalition of the willing," Talia said. "We need high-level allies."

"Yes. High-level allies. You mean one of those wise and benevolent mentor-type dudes. Kind of like Yoda, in that George Lucas book."

"Well, yes, that would work," said Talia.

"I would suggest going to Carpathia University at this point," said Artalax. "We know we can find information on Kalmeth there. And there's thousands of students training to become adventurers, and dozens, if not hundreds, of instructors. I'm sure one of them will be wise and benevolent enough to teach us what we need to know."